THE RADIANT SUCCESSION OF SHAMBHALA:
RIGDEN RAUDRACAKRIN
The core of what follows is an account of the thirty-two rulers of the legendary Kingdom of Shambhala. The first eight were titled Dharma Kings and the latter twenty-five titled Rigdens or ‘Caste Holders’. The eighth Dharma King, Manjusrikirti-Yasas was responsible for the change of social arrangements resulting in the change of title.
The Kingdom of Shambhala is said to have three aspects first as a pure realm, secondly as a real though seldom seen place on the earth, and thirdly as an essential part of human nature. Thus Shambhala is the fruition, path and ground of the social manifestation of enlightened mind.
Only four of its rulers are spoken of as having manifested directly in human historical time: Sucandra, Pundarika, Manjusrikirti-Yasas, and the future twenty-fifth Rigden, Raudracakrin. The rest are known only by the description of their outer appearance in the Kingdom of Shambhala and by the description of their inner manifestation in Sambhogakaya form.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of those who dwell in pure realms is that their compassion can manifest anywhere, uncircumscribed by the concepts of space and time. Thus the inner descriptions of the rulers of Shambhala portray the aspects of enlightenment which they display and which radiate during their reign throughout the human world. Through their complex forms, colors, attributes and atmospheres, the rulers of Shambhala manifest the mind of timelessness in the world of time and move in the hearts of all human beings.
Now, the text.
Now, the twenty-fifth Rigden of Shambhala, Raudracakrin,
The Wrathful One Who Turns The Wheel,
He Who Ends the Current Time of Strife and Establishes a Golden Age,
Takes command of the Crystal Pavilion of the Kalapa Court.
He is the emanation of Vajrakilaya.
2
In the middle of his army, as in a tumult of gold and turquoise clouds,
Seated on his great blue charger with blue-black mane and tail,
Whose gold ornaments glitter, filling the sky with lightning bolts
And whose stamping hooves shake the earth with thunder,
The Rigden Raudracakrin emerges from the fastness of Kalapa
And bursts into the world of time,
Cutting to the heart of cowardice.
He is in the prime of manhood, and his face is and body are dark red.
His obsidian eyes glare with imperious fury and he snarls with rage.
He wears the dazzling gold crown of a dharma king
Adorned with glowing emeralds and sapphires.
His golden armor is blinding like the direct sight of the sun.
Around his neck, on a white silk scarf, he wears a crystal mirror
In which all the phenomena of time and space arise and dissolve.
Beneath his armor, he wears a robe of green brocade with red sleeves lined in pale coral satin.
His pants are made of red brocade adorned with golden dragons.
His gold-shod boots are made of red and white brocade.
A great lapis-colored serpent twines round his neck falling to the level of his secret center.
Green serpents trailing dark clouds encircle his wrists.
In his right hand raised aloft, he brandishes the flaming spear
Which destroys the universe with kalpa-ending fire.
The shaft of his spear is adorned with garudas’ feathers
And a swirling green and coral scarf.
In his left hand, he spins the eight-pointed wheel of meteoric iron
Marked with eight great syllables, whose sound, as the wheel turns,
Destroys all false beliefs about reality and deafens all the emotions of grasping and fixation.
At the sight of him, worlds perish and are reborn.
3
The Rigden Raudracakrin is the complete manifestation of all the Rigdens.
In his unchanging secret form, he is the great protector, Manjusri.
Youthful and at ease, his red body is the color of an all-consuming sandal-wood fire.
Nothing in the form and formless worlds, in mind and beyond mind
Is separate from the light of his unwavering empty gaze.
All distortions, upheavals, displays, realizations and search for freedom
Resolve within his sovereign equipoise.
All the winds of sky and earth are his soft voice,
The secret speech of Samantabhadra.
Because he is the complete lord of all wisdom,
He wears the gold and jeweled crown of the five Tathagathas
Because wisdom presence is inseparable from limitless compassion,
His crown is surmounted by a ruby the size of Mount Meru.
Because his light shines out in all phenomena,
He wears necklaces, arm bands, bracelets and anklets
Of shining gold and glittering jewels.
Because he enters into all the world’s activities,
He wears a billowing shawl of shimmering emerald green.
His skirt is coral and adorned with golden butterflies.
His red silk pants are adorned with galaxies of suns and moons,
And their blue lining is embroidered with all the swirling clouds in space.
In his right hand, held at his heart in the mudra of teaching,
He holds the green stem of a fragrant pink lotus in full bloom
On which stand the gold eight-spoked wheel of the law turning in a mass of flame.
By the turning of the wheel, the claustrophobia of illusory reality
Is shown to be inseparable from all-pervasive, free, luminous bliss.
In his left hand, held at his heart in the mudra of ceaseless offering,
He holds the green stem of a vast pink lotus in full bloom
On which stands the blazing sword of primordial awareness
Which spontaneously cuts through the pained half-light of conceptualization
And reveals on the spot the infinite radiant empty space of liberation.
He is seated on a hexagonal, cloud-backed throne of gold and cinnabar
Supported by eight snow-lions.
Above him a gold and vermilion parasol sways,
Adorned with garlands of gold beads, jewels, silver bells and silk banners.
To his right, his consort, green Sarasvati, plays the Vina
Flooding all of space with melodious sound.
To his left, his consort white as the full moon of compassion,
In her hands in angeli at her heart holds the stem of a white lotus in full bloom
On which stands the sharp sword of omniscience.
They traverse the sky amid sky palaces and offering devis,
And are surrounded by rainbows of light which are every kind of knowing.
He is the complete spontaneous and ever-present power of wisdom,
The deathless Ashe, the inseparability of space and awareness,
The resolution of time and space,
The life force essence of all the Rigden Kings.
4
When time in this realm began,
The world was filled with jewel seas
Surrounding the four great and eight lesser continents
Ranged around Mount Meru.
All the consciousness of beings dwelt in bodies of pure light.
But fascinated by compounded phenomena,
And grasping at continuity,
Beings encased themselves in solidity.
Confidence in the power of egoless action waned.
The three lords of materialism grew in strength
And came to appear to humans as transcendental gods.
Only deities who promised man’s dominion were supplicated.
Only philosophies seeking exclusive human happiness were pursued.
Beginning then in the time of Rigden Samudravijaya
These philosophies and faiths assumed a single face
In the doctrines of the La-los. Madhumati became supreme.
In the following 1700 years, Central Asia, India, China, the Middle East
And more than half the entire world fell beneath its sway.
The earth was then robbed as an unattended treasure house.
The seas became mere fisheries and middens.
Rivers were dammed and lakes used as farms.
Fire became merely a source of household comfort and mechanical power.
The air was fouled.
Forests and plains were destroyed or cultivated according to human need.
Birds, fish, and animals were hunted, captured, butchered and skinned.
The geography of the earth itself assumed hallucinatory shapes.
This is the time of disputes and poisons.
In the headlong race for material gain,
Civilizations and cultures collapse from within and without.
Nations, villages and families split.
Parent and child, brother and sister, life-long friends
Become murderous enemies.
Parents prostitute their children.
Plagues corrupt love and poison water and air.
Insane murderous tyrants, surrounded by cruel lustful sycophants,
Shall rule the earth by the power of terror alone.
Power, violence, scheming and raw possession shall be the only good.
Famine, disease and warfare shall be the only truth.
Nobility, compassion, decency, gentleness, courage
Shall be only words in books.
The world shall be a burning prison house without solace or liberation.
Drugged hallucinations shall be the only refuge.
Drang Tzi Lodro, the La-lo King, will unify his forces and tribes at Tri-Li in Central India.
Then incited by the words of his queen, he will, like a maddened elephant,
Press to conquer all the worlds beyond his own.
Hearing of Shambhala, and seeing it in the smoke of incense offered to his god,
He will mass his armies.
At the same time, like the stench of a rotting corpse,
The vapors from this world
Will begin to poison the air of Shambhala itself.
The dharma will begin to wither and half the abhidharma will disappea.
5
Then, as suddenly as waking up from a murderous nightmare,
As blindingly as seeing the sun appearing in the eye of a black hurricane,
The Rigden Raudracakrin will appear,
Filling the sky with his vast retinue of gods and goddesses,
Generals, ministers, war-carts elephants, cavalry and foot-soldiers.
He will appear in the shining fortress that Mara cannot destroy,
From which the lightning of spontaneous wisdom shatters the black tomb of despair.
Thus ordinary insight will become supreme insight,
Will manifest as the radiant, primordial completion of time.
(9)
Though he is the essence of peace,
Though his mind does not move from the peaceful state of dharmata,
And is inseparable from the minds of the three great protectors of all beings,
The Rigden Raudracakrin will appear to those lost in the rats’ maze of materialism,
And to their proud, cruel and deceptive leaders
As the wrathful and unbearable gleam of the sun of reality,
Annihilating their path and their very life.
(10)
The dharma lord will then emerge from the city of Kalapa.
In the sky surrounding him will be a great retinue
Of worldly and transcendent gods.
Lion-headed Vishnu, the all-pervading, furious with eyes ablaze,
Will ride out on the back of a fire–red garuda,
Wielding the wheel of time and the sword that severs ignorance.
Brahma, lord of space and time, in his gold and ruby battle cart with pennants fluttering,
Will brandish the bow and golden arrows
That fill the heart with fatal hallucinations of passion and of birth.
Siva, Dark Lord of Rishis, Lord of Night and Dreams,
Will fly on an emerald disc with the sound of thunder rolling across the sky
And wave his trident that penetrates birth, continuing and death.
Kumara Skanda, leader of the army of the gods,
Ever youthful with six faces and six arms,
Will shoot his arrows, hurl his thunderbolts and spears.
As he skims above the earth on the back of a great blue peacock,
Riding in a vermilion and gold chariot
Drawn by blue and white celestial steeds,
He will wield his ax and sword.
The twin Asvin gods, Nasatya and Dasra, lithe, shining and handsome,
Bringers of harvest and health, famine and plague,
Shall destroy the fortunes of the enemy.
Riding within his gold and cinnabar cart floating in the air,
Seated on the great blue mouse which is the enjoyment of all,
Great Ganapati white with six arms and one tusk in his elephant head,
He who Binds the Minute to the Infinite and contains all in his great form,
Shall destroy all false distinctions with his trumpet’s scream.
These are the foremost amongst the myriad gods and their retinues
Who will encircle the true dharma and protect it.
Space in all its ten directions will be a protection circle.
At that time, from the unfabricated samadhi which is wind-horse itself,
Joyful, doubtless, genuine and loving,
Spontaneously free from any fixation,
Moving freely in the vast space of the ayatanas,
The Great Dharma Lord, Rigden Raudrachakrin will arise.
He will emanate ninety million stone horses with the power of wind,
Four hundred thousand immense conch-colored elephants, enraged as if drunk,
Five hundred thousand gold chariots and war machines with catapults of fire,
And four vast armies of six million great human warrior lords,
All in splendid golden armor and fully armed.
Among them will ride a host of generals and warriors
Who have the realization of the great lord.
When the great battle begins, the false protectors of the La-los
Dwelling in clouds, mountains and streams will be pierced.
Their powers of illusion will be dispersed like mist.
The Asura Mara Ritha will be pierced through the left side of his head,
By the weapons of the assembled gods.
The Rigden Raudracakrin will pierce the Asura Mara Mati with his spear.
At that very moment, all the holy images and icons of the La-Los
Will shatter into dust.
Rash and arrogant, drunk on their own power of violence,
The La-lo leaders will urge their shaken soldiers on.
The La-lo armies will be torn between hallucinations of defeat
And desperate images of victory until they are in utter disarray and torment.
Rank upon rank, the La-lo troops will be slaughtered,
Crushed under chariot wheels, burned with flames of molten copper,
Pierced with arrows, hacked with swords, and crushed under elephants’ feet.
Yet, terrified as they are, they will still be pressed forward
By the men behind who are still more afraid of their own generals.
The carnage will continue unabated for days
Until the Shambhala General Hanumanda slices the throat
Of the La-lo general with his golden sword.
Then all the leaders of darkness shall be one by one struck down.
Finally, the Great Dharma Lord, Rigden Raudrachakrin himself,
Leaning down from the back of his sky blue steed,
Will swing his time-ending spear of meteoric iron in a great arc
And send its razor point down through the skull of the La-lo king.
The spear will penetrate downward through his entire body.
The life thread of the La-lo King and all his followers will be utterly shredded.
They shall be cut down and none will remain.
The La-lo dharma, risen from ignorance and darkness
And causing immeasurable harm and suffering to sentient beings,
Shall be utterly reversed by the power of authentic dharma.
Thus the continuity of non-dharma will be completely cut off.
6
Then, surrounded by his retinue of god and human warriors,
The Dharma Lord Raudracakrin will return to the mountain palace of Kalapa.
He will turn the wheel of dharma throughout the human realm,
And thus complete the time of his reign.
He and all his retinue will then enter the unborn space of the pure realms.
(11)
As it has been said:
At that time on the earth, all beings will be one family.
Their minds will be wholesome and all activities fulfilled.
The desire for wealth, sensual enjoyment, dharma and liberation
Shall be completed in their fruition.
Grain will flourish even in deserted places,
The fruit of the trees shall abound.
People will enjoy the fullness of life.
In the eight succeeding generations of Shambhala Rigdens,
The Rigdens will dwell continually in the realms of mahamudra and rigpa.
Their subject will grasp the inner meaning
And dwell with them in the pure expanse of radiant fathomless expanse.
(12)
At the conclusion of their reigns,
The dharma shall end in this place.
Until the Buddha of the next eon, Maitreya, shall appear.
Now,
Here,
Unborn space, radiant unconditional awareness, unconditional compassion
Completely enter the realms of perception, concept, birth and death,
Encompass infinite colors forms, expressions, sounds.
Now,
Here,
Endless waves of boundless love
Gather, swell, break and dissolve.
